guarded him. Of such relations there is to be found in the
Brahmanas no trace. If we may use a modern figure of speech, they
conceive the universe of gods, men, and lower creatures as a single
immense electric battery, and the sacrifice as a process of charging
this battery with ever fresh electricity. The sacrifice is a process,
at once material and mystic, which preserves the order of nature as
established by the prototypic sacrifice performed by Prajapati. The
gods became divine and immortal through sacrifice (TS. VI. iii. 4, 7,
VI. iii. 10, 2, VII. iv. 2, 1, SB. I. vi. 2, 1, MS. III. ix. 4, AB.
VI. i. 1, etc.); and they live on the gifts of earth, as mankind lives
on the gifts of heaven (TS. III. ii. 9, 7, SB. I. ii. 5, 24). The
sacrifice is thus the life-principle, the soul, of all gods and all
beings (SB. VIII. vi. 1, 10, IX. iii. 2, 7, XIV. iii. 2, 1); or, what
amounts to the same thing, the Triple Science or the knowledge of the
ceremonies of the Three Vedas is their essence (SB. X. iv. 2, 21). As
Prajapati created the primeval sacrifice, and as the gods by following
this rule obtained their divinity, so man should seek to follow their
example and by means of sacrifice rise to godhead and immortality. As
one Brahmana puts it, the sacrifice leads the way to heaven; it is
followed by the _dakshina_, or fee paid by the sacrificer to the
sacrificant priests, which of course materially strengthens the
efficacy of the sacrifice; and third comes the sacrificer, holding
fast to the _dakshina_. This ascent of heaven is symbolised in the
ceremony called _durohana_, or "hard mounting" (AB. IV. 20, 21, KB.
XXV. 7), and it is ensured by the rite of _diksha_, or consecration,
in which the sacrificer is symbolically represented as passing through
a new conception, gestation, and birth, by which he is supposed to
obtain two bodies. One of these bodies is immortal and spiritual; the
other is mortal and material, and is assigned as a victim to all the
gods. He then ransoms his material body from the obligation of being
sacrificed, as did Prajapati, and thus ranks literally as a "god on
earth," with the certainty of becoming in due course a god in heaven.

When the student on reading the Brahmanas finds them full of
interminable ceremonial rules with equally interminable commentaries
interpreting them by wildest analogies as symbolical of details of
myths or of laws of nature and hence as conferring mystic powers,
besides all kind